


Flower in the Crannied Wall

by athousandwinds



Category: Seven Kingdoms: The Princess Problem (Visual Novel)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Hanahaki Disease, Minor Hise Pirate/Ria
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:48:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21839968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athousandwinds/pseuds/athousandwinds
Summary: When Jasper finds himself coughing up flowers, he hides them in the vases around my lady's room. What else would he do?
Relationships: Hise Pirate/Jasper
Comments: 6
Kudos: 25
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Flower in the Crannied Wall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AwayLaughing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AwayLaughing/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! I hope you enjoy the story as much as I enjoyed writing it.
> 
> The title is robbed wholesale from Alfred Tennyson's "Flower in the crannied wall" (1863).

Lady Avalie’s voice was as clear as a bell, and just as sweet. “What are your goals for the summit, Lady Antonia?”

In the back of the hall, where all the butlers were stood waiting, Jasper straightened. In all their lessons on eloquence, he hadn’t prepared her for an interruption. It hadn’t occurred to him that there would be one at the self-introductions; it wasn’t done. They’d had so much _else_ to get through.

Lady Antonia said nothing for a moment and Jasper found his lips parting, as if to mouth a speech for her. As if she could see him, back here in the shadows. As if she would listen to him, if she could.

As if she needed it. Her pause was only that; just thinking it over. She said: “I want to follow in Katyia’s footsteps.”

A charge ran round the room, but Lady Antonia seemed unaware of it. She nodded to Lady Avalie and strode off the dais, dropping her numbered rock into the head butler’s sack as she went. Somehow, impossibly, before she sat back down, she turned her head and her gaze found his, hidden as he was.

She winked.

Jasper put up his hand to cover his mouth: first he gave a light cough, to conceal his smile; then a second, deeper cough. Something had caught in the back of his throat, impeding his breath. He wheezed harder, beginning to double over slightly.

Head Butler Jorges was looking at him disapprovingly.

Half-desperate, he forced out a final, weak huff and suddenly his breath came easily again. He took his hand away from his mouth, horribly conscious that something had been expelled from his throat, and curled it into a loose fist. It wasn’t until he was some way down the corridor and wholly alone that he risked checking the contents of his glove, but what he saw made him stop dead in his tracks.

Three purple petals lay in his palm.

\---

The first thing that had struck him about her was that she was carelessly good-looking, in the style that even in women was called “handsome”: tall and lantern-jawed with clear brown skin. Where most of the delegates had taken care to come ashore in their finest travelling clothes, hers had been stained by salt and spray, as if she’d spent the whole voyage on deck sleeping before the mast. In her dark hair there had been flashes of gold; after a moment’s attention, he had determined that this was not the odd golden strand, dyed or natural, but the slenderest of gold wire carefully woven in for just such an effect.

She’d stuck her hand out to them, smiling. “I’m Antonia of _Morning Lark_ – Hise, I mean. You can call me Tonka.”

“Lady Antonia,” Jasper had said repressively, before Ria could end up in the rafters from sheer embarrassment. “Would you like a moment to freshen up before the welcome feast?”

“Is that a hint? All right, let’s get down to business.”

There was a magic to outfitting delegates for the welcome feast. Jasper had seen it before: as an errand boy for more senior servants, as a valet for male delegates, and now as a butler. Kade had used to make fun of the delegates when they were boys, sitting on top of a high-flying gargoyle and cracking nuts. Dropping the shells on the heads of the unsuspecting delegates below had been Kade’s peculiar joy that year, though Jasper had told him off for it. Or tried, anyhow. Kade had never listened.

The gold and silver gown Sayra had decided on had suited Lady Antonia well and, more importantly to her, it hadn’t hindered her stride. She’d paused in the doorway and held out her arm.

“May I escort you down to the welcome feast?” she’d asked, her mouth twitching irresistibly.

Perhaps the trouble had begun then, though he didn’t remember it that way. There hadn’t been any of this tickling at the back of his throat, nor the constriction of his chest. In fact, he’d felt something unfurling as he took her arm, like the blossoming of early morning light.

Such partiality was discouraged among the Vail Isle servants: it was all very well to like one’s delegate, but the fact remained that they’d only be here for seven weeks. It happened occasionally that a servant would develop such a predilection for a delegate that they followed them back to their country, or, more tragically, back to their fiancé’s country; in any case, it rarely ended well. Vail Isle enjoyed a rarefied existence, and the worldly dirt of other nations could be profoundly disappointing.

In the full knowledge of this, Jasper had nevertheless gone on to make a fool of himself over Lady Antonia’s many invitations. More than one of her suitors had eyed him with an uncomfortable level of shrewdness; he had not liked being called “watchy-watchy starey man”. It was too close to the truth.

He feared constantly that one of the delegates had divined his secret. “Prince” Hamin was the most troubling of these: though Lord Clarmont or Prince Zarad might have perceived his feelings, he judged them both unlikely to let the cat out of the bag. Prince Hamin wouldn’t think twice. Careless as he was, it might not even occur to him that it was a secret.

After all, what was there to know?

Preoccupied with his merry-go-round thoughts, he didn’t immediately notice her frowning over her letters, tapping her gilded seahorse letter opener against the steel of the breakfast tray.

“My lady?”

Wordlessly, she handed him the letter. He scanned it – brief, ominous, the seal nondescript and the sort of thing which might be purchased anywhere, or at least anywhere that was not Vail Isle, cut off as it was. He would have noticed a new merchant on Vail Isle. Wouldn’t he?

Had he really been so distracted?

When he set it down again, she was thumbing the head of the seahorse, repeating the movement over and over without seeming to notice.

“Who do you think it was who got so mad?” Lady Antonia turned her head; Jasper could clearly see the muscle leaping in her jaw. “Who’ve I infuriated by being – ” she gestured at the letter. “ _Exceptional?_ ”

“I will look into this for you, my lady,” he said.

“We can do it together.”

“Forgive me, Lady Antonia,” he said, “but that might attract this enemy’s ire still further.”

“Well, it’s not as if I can stop being _exceptional_ ,” she said, setting down the letter opener with a sharp _tink_. “Would it even make a difference?”

Jasper did not bother to argue. Lady Antonia was too easy-going to quarrel, but she would do as she pleased, without reference to him or anyone else. Better to divert her train of thought. “We must also decide whether you would like to captain a team in the summit’s ship race.”

She stared at him, then threw back her head and laughed. “That wasn’t subtle, Jasper! Am I supposed to be low-key and retiring now?”

“I do not doubt your capabilities, however you choose to exercise them.”

“So I should fake being some shy country mouse? What a lot of baloney.” She grinned at him, ever-gallant. “Which of my lovelorn swains should I cozen into hauling rope for me?”

“That is your decision, Lady Antonia,” he said severely, which he knew by now only increased her amusement. “I would not presume to tell a captain how to sail.”

“Who’s a good sport? I’m sure Penny and Lisle are, Ana definitely is, and I feel like Zarad isn’t the type to pitch a fit just because he got soaked.”

Jasper took out Lady Antonia’s writing set and began to draft her invitation as she dictated it, leaving the salutation blank for now.

“There are others from your own delegation,” he observed after a little while.

“We can’t have all the Hise delegates on one team, that’s just asking to get beaten by Ana,” she said. “Still, though…When was the last time Hamin put to sea, anyway? Bet it can’t have been less than a year ago. Bet he’s rusty.”

Her jealousy was ill-concealed and her longing palpable. Jasper folded the invitation to Prince Hamin and sealed it, stamping it with the lady’s personal crest, an owl flying above a ship in full sail.

“If you are not fully confident in his skill, there is still time to invite Princess Anaele instead,” he murmured finally.

“I’m confident, I’m confident!” She waved a hand frantically from the chaise longue. “I should have told him something like, oooh, Hamin, I’m kidnapping you for my team, only with your strong arm behind me am I assured of victory. Is that too much?” Jasper had been subject to a fit of coughing. “It’s probably too much. Try, ‘in the name of the Dread Pirate Blackthorn, I commandeer you!’”

“I’m sure he will be delighted to accept, however you word your invitation,” said Jasper. He had seen the glint in Prince Hamin’s eye when he had burst into the room to claim his companion for the evening, and could not suppose him to be put off by either overt flirtation or maidenly reserve.

Pocketing the handful of petals that had come up, he smoothed down the flap in his jacket. It was rapidly becoming a compulsive habit, particularly as the attacks became more frequent and virulent.

He was almost certain by now that he could pinpoint the moment when this bias had tipped over into immoderation. It was disagreeable to admit that one could suffer the ugly pangs of jealousy, the unpalatable knowledge that one’s company was not preferred combined with a sudden awareness of loneliness, but Jasper was trying his best not to spare himself. The emptiness of sitting alone in the antechamber of Lady Antonia’s room, conscious that there must be something to straighten or dust, equally aware that she might return at any moment and he should be ready, had hollowed out his chest.

Her eruption into the room, carrying a lamp to study elocution by, had filled the hole with light.

And flowers, too, apparently.

\---

Between a Wellish father and a Hisean mother, the one kind of dress Lady Antonia had in abundance was riding habits. This one was a rich chestnut brown, cunningly cut to hide the fact that she would be riding astride, not sidesaddle.

“Though sidesaddle’s kind of more fun if you like risking your neck on the jumps,” she added conspiratorially. Jasper’s hands twitched on the breakfast tray.

“Oh, don’t say something like that, my lady!” Ria cried. Her distress was only heightened when a large black feather turned up in Lady Antonia’s washbasin, an unprepossessing suggestion of how the day might go. The time left before the ride was given over to Lady Antonia soothing her and teasing her out of her anxiety. Jasper turned away, busying himself with cleaning away the remains of her breakfast.

“Well, and I’d never worry you like that by getting hurt,” Lady Antonia concluded. “Think of how Jasper would scold me! So dry your eyes, Ria, there’s no need to be afraid for me.”

Ria managed a tremulous smile. “If my lady says so,” she said.

Against all odds, Lady Antonia succeeded in leaving for the group ride more or less on time, and Jasper turned his attention to the state of the mirror over the vanity: there was a tiny hairline crack in its smooth polish that worried him. It was while he was examining the glass that he saw in reflection Ria collapsing onto Lady Antonia’s bed, wracked by a series of coughs.

“Don’t look at me, please!” she croaked into her hands, attempting to rise, but Jasper had already swung round and he made her sit down again with his arm round her until the fit passed. When she raised her head again, her eyelashes teary, her nervousness only confirmed his suspicion.

In Ria’s hand was a whole daisy, as perfect as if she’d picked it out of the west lawn.

“I know my place, really I do,” she said hoarsely. “I promise I wouldn’t – I know the delegates have all their important work to do – I’m not good enough for a lady like – ”

“Nonsense,” said Jasper roundly, surprising himself with his firmness. “Lady Antonia is _lucky_ to have someone like you by her side. I am lucky, to have you here. If you like her, you should say so – no one who was truly worthy of you would treat you poorly over it.”

The hypocrisy nearly brought on an attack, but he stifled it in his fist and smiled at Ria, squeezing her shoulders.

“Thank you,” she said, twisting her wet handkerchief in her hands. “Oh, what a morning it’s been!”

Jasper could hardly argue. Ria got up determinedly and, after a moment of indecision, began to clean the hairbrush with heroic concentration. He left her to it, making his way down to the kitchens to persuade Mrs White to give him a lunch tray that he, Ria and Sayra could share privately.

He was rounding the corner into the scullery when a noise from the door into the kitchen garden attracted his attention. Kade was standing in the doorway, blocking the midday sunlight and casting the room into darkness.

“Terribly sorry to hear about your princess, Jasper.”

“Lady Antonia isn’t a princess,” Jasper said automatically, and then went cold. “What do you mean?”

“Aren’t they all princes and princesses when they’re here? And us their fawning servants. _Yes_ , my lady, _no_ , my lady, three bags full, my lady.”

“ _What do you mean?_ ”

His harsh tone didn’t impress Kade, but it seemed to diminish his desire to play.

“Your precious jewel took a tumble while out riding,” he said. “Someone even stupider than she is stuck a firethorn under her saddle and the horse went mad. I was hoping she’d fall to her death and put an end to about half the romantic twaddle that usually goes on until the old lady starts yoking them to each other, but no luck today.”

“She is alive?” Jasper latched on to the important point, steadying himself against the sink.

“Oh, I’m sure she has a few bruises for you to fuss over. You should stare tenderly into her eyes while you rub the arnica in, I hear that’s a guaranteed success.”

His anxiety beginning to subside, Jasper managed to force out, “You know I don’t care for your filthy insinuations.”

“What, is it not true? You don’t want to serve her egg on toast every morning? Polish every chair she might sit on? You don’t dream of licking her riding boots clean?”

The first thing that came to hand was the scrubbing brush; Jasper hurled it at him. Kade dodged, and Jasper doubled over coughing.

It had been coming for some minutes, since _your princess_ , but he had hoped he might hold it off until Kade got bored or he angered him enough that he stormed out. This one was a bad one; it brought him to his knees, his right hand still curled loosely round the edge of the sink. The back of his throat was burning as he spat up petals, his breath sawing harshly.

He sensed, rather than saw or heard, Kade’s footsteps coming closer, until he halted about a foot away.

“This is really quite pathetic, Jasper,” said Kade. “All this for a woman who will never love you?”

Jasper could have said, _That’s not the point_ , or _My duty is to the summit_ , or _She’s much more than that_ , all of which would have been true, but the idea of letting Kade see even a moment more of him exposed and raw was unbearable. He wrenched himself to his feet, abandoning the scattered petals on the floor, and half-running for the door.

He made it all the way back to Lady Antonia’s rooms before he stopped. Leaning against the wall to catch his breath, he was barely able to straighten up before Lady Antonia herself strode in, seemingly no worse for wear than a few grass stains on her habit.

“My lady,” he said. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, Jasper,” she said, but her eyes, when they met his, were deadly serious. Something like knowledge passed between them, and Jasper bowed his head. Inquiries would have to be made and quickly.

\---

The morning of the boat race dawned clear and sharp, the west wind off the sea high but not piercing. Jasper made a point of rising early and going down to the harbour, ostensibly to ensure that Lady Antonia’s orders about the condition of the yacht had been carried out.

“Prince” Hamin was already there, crouched next to a coil of heavy rope as he passed the end through his hands. When he looked up and saw Jasper, there was no trace of guilt in his face, nor concern about being caught.

“I’ve checked the hull as best I can without having her dragged out of the water,” he said. “Unless Princess Penny cuts a hole in the side with a lathe the size of my thigh, the bilge pump should be able to handle any unexpected leaks. There’s nothing wrong with the mast, it should be able to stand up to a wind like this without any trouble, and the sails are in good nick, too.”

“You say ‘should’,” said Jasper.

Prince Hamin snorted and threw down the end of the rope before repenting and neatening the coil again. “Glitter’s horse _should_ have been one of the quietest in the stable.”

Jasper had nothing to say to that.

“What remains to be done?” he asked.

“Not much. The yachts here are all in pretty decent condition. I was expecting them to be a bit more ragged…”

“We have plenty of warning to prepare for the summits,” Jasper said coldly. “There is a ship race every time.”

“What, you don’t race them yourselves in off years? I was thinking the Isle’d be a nice berth, but I guess it’s not like this every day. Why not? It’s not like we’re using them.”

Nettled by this remark, not dissimilar to a complaint uttered by an adolescent Kade – who had later stolen a yacht for midnight sailing and capsized it – Jasper did not deign to reply, but instead focused his attention on examining the sails. They were, as Prince Hamin had said, in good condition.

The harbour was just beginning to fill up with spectators when he stepped ashore, bowing to Lady Antonia as she strode down the jetty. He took his place beside Ria and Sayra in the servants’ section, organised for them by the Grand Duke. Sayra shot him a sidelong glance.

“Everything all right?”

He nodded, though it galled him to put his trust in Prince Hamin’s expertise. Several hundred feet away, across the harbour, he could see Lady Antonia consulting something in the palm of her hand – notes? A gleam of gold. Her father’s stopwatch, inscribed with a message from her mother; her most prized possession.

The clanging of the bell and they were off, streaking through the white-tipped waters. Lady Antonia’s yacht was the first to cross the starting line, swift and precise, and Ria set up a cheer that ran through half the delegates.

Her team was soon well out into the bay, each moment taking her further and further away from the Isle, as natural as the course of tides. Soon he could not see her at all, only hope that each white fleck upon the waves might be her boat returning.

“Here,” said Sayra, pressing something cold and metallic into his hand. It was a brass spyglass, old and heavy.

He lifted it to his eye and, after a moment, found Lady Antonia again, much nearer in the glass than in reality; so near, in the glass, that he could see the flash of the sun reflected off the gold wire in her hair.

The tickle in the back of his throat was becoming unbearable.

“Tonka! Tonka!” Ria chanted along with the rest of the crowd, startling him out of his reverie. The yachts were coming back into the harbour, Lady Antonia’s in the lead. As she crossed the finish line, Ria’s voice cracked on her cheer, just as Jasper finally gave up stifling the cough forcing its way out of him.

Sayra whipped out a handkerchief for Ria to hide her burning face in and aimed a pointed look at him. “This is ridiculous.”

“I’m sorry,” said Ria, which earned her a one-armed hug from the usually undemonstrative Sayra. Jasper attempted to recover his dignity, taking the opportunity to scatter the purple petals in the bushes that lined the harbour. Ria followed suit, flapping Sayra’s handkerchief so that the daisy petals blew away on the wind.

“You should confess, too,” she said in a small voice.

“Excuse me?” Jasper said.

“Well, I mean – I mean I don’t mean, but I’ve been thinking about it, and everything you said to me about, well, about telling Lady Antonia even if it’s hopeless, well, it _is_ true, isn’t it? She won’t be unkind at all.”

Jasper said, rather coolly, “Thank you, Ria.”

He spun on his heel and began to stride back towards the castle, but not before he heard Ria mutter to Sayra, “Well, it _is_ true,” in a rebellious tone. He considered returning to reprimand her, but it occurred to him that this would be bickering and his pride could not endure it.

Back in Lady Antonia’s room, he started clearing up some of the debris of the rushed morning. Her cosmetics and hair ornaments lay strewn across the vanity; he replaced them in their respective boxes and straightened the chair. Her green dressing gown had been flung carelessly over the chaise longue; he retrieved the hanger and put it back in her wardrobe. All of it could have waited; Lady Antonia would not have reproved him even had he left the mess for a week.

He wanted the time to think.

That this illness was not going away was evident. Indeed, with each passing day it worsened: soon it would become impossible to conceal. Even the thought of it made him want to cringe. The idea of having his feelings on display for the whole summit – for people like the Head Butler to tut-tut over, understanding _nothing_ ; for people like Grand Duke Woodly to pick over for the bones of an advantage; and for someone like Kade to savage him with it when displeased – he would rather die.

Die quietly, and without much fuss, leaving no impression on the summit. Perhaps Lady Antonia would mourn – but that would defeat the whole object. To leave no trace except a dry note in an observer’s diary about how Jasper, a Vail Isle native, insert a hundred-year line of ancestry back to the last great inflection point of history, had died of an unknown illness during the fifteenth summit…

His stomach, or perhaps his chest, rebelled, and he doubled over just as Lady Antonia came through the door.

“Jasper! Are you all right?”

“A sneeze only,” he said hoarsely, forcing air through his lungs.

“Are you sure? Hadn’t you better sit down?”

“I’m very well,” he said, straightening up to smile at her. She seemed unconvinced, drawing out the chair he had just pushed in and motioning to him to sit. He obeyed and she threw herself down on the chaise longue.

“Were you watching the race?”

“I was; you were excellent.”

“It’s a team sport,” she said, obviously pleased. Glancing down, she toyed a little with the hem of her tunic. “Hamin said my mother would be proud.”

There was a short silence. If he had hoped to wait her out, he was disappointed; she did not elaborate.

“Your father would be as well,” he said eventually.

“You think so?” She brightened slightly. “I don’t know, he doesn’t much like it when I go out sailing.”

“To be afraid of drowning is not the same thing as hating the sea,” he said slowly.

“I thought maybe I’d take him on a trip when I got back,” she said. “Nowhere crazy. Just a brief sail round Jiyel’s western edge. Deliver some letters, trade a few crates of Wellish gin for plum wine. Show him that there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“You’ve decided to go back?” he asked, too swiftly, too openly, too _interested_.

She hesitated and then sighed out a rueful laugh. “I guess that’s a point. I could get married. What’s the plan there? Marry Hamin and corner the market in spices for our kids? Marry Ana and become a full-blown pirate queen?” Her voice dropped low. “Marry Zarad and go looking for my mother?”

In an equally hushed tone, he asked: “Do you believe her to be alive?”

“It’s a slender enough thing to hang a whole marriage on,” she said, not quite answering.

Jasper’s hand moved suddenly, of its own accord, and he quickly pulled it back before she noticed.

“You don’t have to choose anyone,” he said. “Or, rather, you can choose yourself.”

“That’s good advice,” she said. “Do _you_ ever choose yourself?”

_Over what?_

He almost asked the question aloud, but instead he rose sharply to his feet. “Are you aware of the tradition associated with the Matchmaker’s Breakfast?”

“I’ve heard of it,” she said, cocking her head at the abrupt change of subject.

“Then I shall not bore you with a repetition. The fact is that I wished to pass on a few tokens of my own, as – well, due to – ”

“You didn’t have to,” she said, lighting up.

He retrieved the parcels and came back, placing them before her rather gingerly, as if the revelation of their contents might somehow turn her against them, and him.

“They’re for luck,” he said, and if his speech was a little rehearsed she didn’t seem to mind. “I believe you won’t need it, given how hard you’ve worked. I think I would have given you these even if you weren’t my assigned lady, had I gotten to know you the way I have now.” He swallowed against the rush of emotion, too much for such an occasion. “But I’m glad you were. You have made me incredibly proud, my lady. I know that this week the Matchmaker will see in you what I have always seen.”

She had a hand pressed over her mouth; for a mad moment Jasper thought she might cough. But her eyes were glistening and when she spoke her voice was thick and indistinct, quite different from her usual clear tone.

“Thank you, Jasper.”

Feeling uncomfortably as if he had said more than he meant to – he had planned it meticulously to ensure he didn’t – Jasper backed out of the room with a bow.

\---

“It seems to me that we have discussed this before, Jasper,” said Dowager Countess Yvette, wheeling herself into the Small Library. Jasper cast a glance around, but the delegates generally avoided the libraries like the plague; there was only Duke Lyon around and he was asleep atop Katinka’s _Ethical Quandaries_.

“I’m sure I’d remember,” he said, giving into the urge to neaten the books so that the spines were adjacent to the edge of the shelf.

“I am informed that you are ill.”

“A little; it’s nothing to be concerned about.”

“Of course I’m concerned,” she said, gentling her tone somewhat. “Others of our society have fallen prey to such illness before. It leads only to pain and sorrow – for everybody.”

“Is it only our society it affects?” Jasper inquired, letting his hands fall from the books.

“Not only our society,” said Yvette, low.

No, Conall hadn’t been. More of Kade’s persuasion, truth be told; and thus often at loggerheads with the quiet, perceptive chaperone, going so far as to exchange correspondence during the years when there were no summits. It had not been a scandal, not when all parties were so discreet, but there had been a seismic shift as the word ran through the Isle. Jasper had been a teenager at the time and could still remember the cold shock of hearing what Conall had done. The custom on the Isle was to either confess quietly or hide everything until the bitter end; Conall had invented medicine.

He had changed after drinking it: where he had once been fierce he was now indifferent; where he had been generous of spirit he became apathetic. Even calm, rational Yvette had been visibly shaken by meeting him again four or five years after the fact.

Kade had been livid. It was the first time Jasper had really understood how much he chafed against life on the Isle and the experience had not been pleasant. Kade’s sneer had become pronounced in Conall’s presence; every time he looked at him there was barely concealed rage and disappointment in his face.

“Do you know why it only affects us and not them?” he’d demanded.

Jasper hadn’t; he still didn’t. But Kade had a theory:

“Enforced passivity. _They’ll_ all go back to their lives in the _real_ world when this is over – their idea of the real world – while we stay here, marking time for seven years until they come back, pretending it all means something. Even Conall! He always talked a lot about breaking up the summits, but he never even left the Isle. We never got this disease before Katyia and now it still only kills us. Not them.”

Yvette’s gaze was upon him, like a cool hand on a fevered forehead. “Are you in pain, Jasper?”

“Not yet.”

She nodded, her eyes narrowed. “What do you intend to do?”

He had no answer for her.

“The recipe has been refined since Conall first made it,” she said softly. “Not so harsh; not such a change in you.”

“Do you think that would be best?” Jasper asked, his voice strangely discordant to his own ears. His feelings were inconvenient – true, almost certainly unwelcome – true, and killing him – true – but for all that they were his own.

“I think that would be best,” she said gravely. “I would grieve enormously for your death, as would many others. To confess would be to intervene in a game that is playing out across decades, exploding all our traditions – and you understand very well why things are the way they are.”

“Just so,” he said. Without looking, he took a volume from the shelf and made his way outside, knowing Yvette would not follow now that she’d said her piece.

That he was capable of inaction was not new to him; he had seen several summits by now and seen delegates come and go, rise and fall, without much agony or soul-searching. That this one was especially tense should mean nothing. That this one saw him serving a particularly charismatic delegate should mean nothing. It _did_ mean nothing, in the grand sweep of history.

He looked down at the book in his hands, intending to return it to its proper place, and choked on sudden laughter. Deri Fariner’s _Principles of Seamanship._ Of course.

\---

“People are terrible, Jasper,” said Lady Antonia, staring up at the canopy over her bed. “Let’s hoist the black flag and flee tonight.”

Jasper ventured a slight cough, hoping that this would forestall any more violent eruptions. “I’m sorry to hear that dinner was unpleasant.”

“Wouldn’t you like to be my first mate? We could sail the open sea, go forth and discover what’s north of Skalt – Ria can be cabin girl.”

“It would be difficult to keep your clothes properly laundered,” said Jasper.

“Wash ‘em in sea water, beat the salt out of them when they dry,” Lady Antonia said. “Don’t shudder like that, Jasper!”

“I once met a sailor whose trousers could stand up by themselves,” said Jasper. “Forgive my doubts, my lady.”

“I wish you’d call me Antonia,” she said.

He coughed, but for once the flowers didn’t come. “It would not be appropriate while the summit was ongoing.”

“So you’ll call me Antonia after the summit’s over?” She brightened considerably. “Well, that’s something to look forward to!”

He smiled at her and was rewarded with a wide grin, which faded slightly as she seemed to remember something.

“What normally does happen after the summit? Here, I mean.”

“The castle is cleaned thoroughly and afterwards those who usually live outside return to their homes,” he said. “A skeleton staff remains at the castle to maintain it until the next summit.”

She sat up, scattering the bedclothes around her, her hair in utter disarray. “Do _you_ usually live outside? What’s your house like?”

Jasper hesitated. It was not forbidden to talk about one’s life outside the summit; most delegates didn’t ask, content with the illusion that Vail Isle existed only once every seven years, as a kind of fairy-tale castle guarded by the misty seas. Still, it was rarely discussed. The idea that the Vail Isle natives might have an existence outside the summits occasionally led to confused notions about their compromised neutrality. Kade had despised this as he despised much else, arguing that neutrality was impossible; more, that it was undesirable. Though he’d used nastier terms than that. In the days when they were friends, Jasper had used to argue that neutrality, if impossible, was still something to strive for. Now the argument exhausted him, its hollowness unspeakable. So he was biased. It was human to feel partiality; it could no longer be helped in him.

“I have always lived in the castle,” he allowed.

“What do you do in the years between summits?” Her fingers were twisting the blanket, seemingly unconsciously. “Do you ever travel? Go and see the world?”

He wondered what it was she really meant to ask. “It is not…customary, for us to travel.”

“But you can, can’t you? It’s not like you’re prisoners here?”

Her voice went up a little at the end, turning a statement into a question.

“We can,” he admitted. “Some of us travel quite frequently when preparing for the summits, as Mrs White does.” Though Mrs White was a special case in more ways than one.

“Do _you_?”

Was he imagining the slight emphasis on _you_?

“No,” he said. “I have never left the Isle.”

“Would you ever want to?”

He was rather startled by the question. It had never really been part of his firmament; so alien to him that even the suggestion came as a surprise –

_Was that really true?_

Once he had enjoyed tales of faraway lands, be they fantastical or as dry as the entry for “Hise, n.” in the encyclopaedia. It had drawn him and Kade together, the two of them mapping out sea routes for how one might get around all seven kingdoms on the least amount of money, writing up unfeasibly long lists of historical sites to visit. The desire for exploration had curdled in Kade, turning inward on itself; in Jasper it had been smothered by duty, by a host of more pressing ethical questions, by, eventually, a desire for professionalism.

“I don’t know,” he said.

Some of the energy went out of Lady Antonia when he spoke; he looked away, unsure of what he’d said wrong.

“Do you know why my father didn’t take me back to Wellin after my mother was – captured?”

“I…assumed that he didn’t wish to disrupt your life further,” he said carefully.

“He meant to. Oh, with the best of intentions. I was sixteen, he thought I would need a feminine hand in my upbringing. A mother for the motherless. He was going to take me to live with my aunt in the capital. Imagine me in Wellin!”

She laughed abruptly.

“We got all the way there. The capital in Wellin is incredibly ugly, all these white stone buildings forcing their way up into the sky – they look all right in pictures, but when you see half a dozen of them all crowded together they’re just awful. It’s nothing like the houses in Hise, even in Farine; they’re sort of low-slung and painted every colour in the rainbow. Anyway, our carriage stopped outside my aunt’s house and we went into her drawing room to meet her. She got up as soon as we walked in and hugged my father, cried over him. All very sweet, very kind. And we sat down and she immediately starts in on my mother, and how it never would have worked anyway, she told him that when he wrote to say he was married to a Hisean woman. ‘A fish may love a bird,’ she said, ‘but where would they live?’”

She let out a breath; an approximation of amusement. Jasper’s hands were clenched tight, white-knuckled for a reason too mortifying to admit.

“That was when my father got up and walked out. He didn’t say a word, just took my arm and we left. The voyage to Wellin was three weeks’ travel and then another week over land to the capital, but we went straight back to Hise. Our ship’s captain hadn’t even had time to put to sea again.”

Flopping back against her mattress, Lady Antonia shoved an arm beneath her head and craned her neck to look at him. “Anyway, that was more or less what it was like at dinner. Fish, birds, how can anybody _really_ care about someone who isn’t just like them in every conceivable way?” She made a loud scoff and repeated, this time with conviction, “People are terrible, Jasper.”

From across the room, he looked back at her, five feet and a world away.

“Sometimes, yes,” he said.

\---

Lady Antonia had been distracted the whole morning, unable to concentrate on her etiquette lessons. Luncheon was no improvement: all it did was free her from pretence of paying attention. Was it his failure to uncover more information about her attacker that preoccupied her? He didn’t think so; it seemed to worry him more than her. No, her trouble had come in the morning post. Even now she toyed with the already-worn edge of one of her letters, ignoring her sandwich.

“…in the fifth week, you will very much enjoy the traditional tying of the most unpopular delegate to a rock to be eaten by a sea serpent,” he tried, and was rewarded by the sudden clearing of her gaze.

“That’ll be Blain, right?”

“If my lady does not concentrate more,” he began severely, but she cried mercy immediately and begged his pardon. Mollified, he poured her another cup of tea.

“Would my lady like me to summon her companion for this afternoon?”

“You make it sound like I’ve got a harem of gigolos,” Lady Antonia complained, stretching out in her chair as she sipped her tea. He could not help watching her long, athletic legs, clad in dark blue satin, as she crossed one lazily over the other. “Actually, they’re all shockingly respectable. Even Zarad barely tried anything.”

Had she wanted him to? She didn’t seem too disappointed, only amused by the whole affair.

“Prince Zarad will also have a butler,” he reminded her. “One who specialises in etiquette, I should imagine.”

“Marvellous, that’s just what he deserves,” she declared. “What do you specialise in, Jasper? You’ve always seemed so well-rounded.”

Was he imagining the quick up-and-down glance when she said that? Yes. When he looked at her sidelong, her eyes were fixed limpidly on his face.

“I prefer to be flexible,” he said. A tremor passed over Lady Antonia’s mouth, but he did not inquire into the cause. “The delegates I have served have been of varying dispositions, so it was thought necessary that I should be a generalist.”

“Do you have a favourite thing to teach?”

Dancing, he thought, but shook his head. That had been a…recent development.

“That’s a shame,” she said. “Still, as we’ve got nothing to do this afternoon – ”

“Nothing?” he asked, too eagerly.

That got him a quick look from beneath her eyelashes. “Nothing,” she confirmed. “Poor Jasper, has my social life been running you ragged?”

“Not at all, my lady,” he said, before realising she’d been trying to give him an out. “That is…it would be pleasant to have a relaxing evening.”

“Good!” she said. “Because I’ve got to learn this Wellish polka by the ambassadors’ ball, and you know I can’t dance for toffee, Jasper, so help me, pretty please?”

Quite unprofessionally, he hesitated. Lady Antonia hadn’t bothered to refine her deportment in all these weeks, claiming that if she could balance on a yardarm she could balance on anything, an assertion that sent a line of cold sweat down Jasper’s spine.

She touched his arm and he felt all the muscles from wrist to shoulder lock up. Apparently she did, too; her eyes widened and her grip tightened slightly before releasing him entirely. “You don’t have to. I’ll manage…”

“Certainly I will help,” he said, reversing course instantly. “Shall I summon an accompanist?”

“No, no,” she said quickly. “That would be – no need to trouble anyone. I can hum it.”

Without delay, she inserted herself neatly into his clasp, placing one of his hands on her waist and taking the other firmly in hers. It occurred to him, dizzily, that he had never been this close to her before. Looking down at the top of her head, he could identify each individual strand of hair, undressed today and no less lovely.

“Like this,” she said, beginning to hum, and he followed her lead, barely having to correct her steps. For a dangerous moment, he lost himself in the low hum of her chest against his, the way she tugged him forward with unalloyed confidence as she danced backwards, the feel of her taut waist under his palm.

He did not notice when she stopped humming. For several minutes they danced around the room in total silence, keeping a beat in tandem that neither was counting. At last they came to a halt: she tilted her head to look up at him, smiling.

For some reason, she didn’t say a word. Nor did she move; she simply stood there, gazing into his face, searching.

He thought for a wild moment that she might let him kiss her and instantly felt a tell-tale itch in his throat. Breaking away from her hold – did her grasp linger, reluctant to let him go? – he coughed into his hand, successfully concealing the results beneath his tongue.

“Jasper?” she said, sounding concerned.

“Forgive me, my lady,” he managed, and heard her exasperated sigh.

“There’s nothing to forgive, but what’s wrong?”

“Nothing at all,” he said, swallowing the petals. They felt worse going down than they had coming up. “I’m afraid I have an appointment with the Matchmaker, so I must leave you for now.”

“I – all right,” she said. Then, a little snappishly, she added: “Put in a good word for me, will you?”

\---

His spurious meeting with the Matchmaker notwithstanding, relations with Lady Antonia were still tense the next morning, perhaps because she was heavy-eyed with exhaustion and disinclined to suffer fools. Jasper’s attempt at easing her anxiety was met with a face of stone.

She spent breakfast tearing a defenceless bread roll to pieces, barely deigning to eat any. After no more than a few bites, she set it down suddenly on the plate.

“I know, I know,” she said in answer to a question he had not asked. “It’s stupid to make a decision like this on an empty stomach. But I can’t eat.”

“Have you made a decision?” he asked, his heart catching a little.

“Not yet.”

As he escorted her down the corridor, Ria came rushing out of her room. Jasper, keyed-up as he was, barely managed to keep his composure.

“Ria?” said Lady Antonia, sounding surprised.

“Lady Antonia! …I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to delay you…only…”

Blood pounding in his ears, Jasper bowed and found an excuse to walk back into the bedroom, well out of earshot. So Ria was – Ria had screwed up the courage to make her confession. Certainly he could wish her well. It would almost be a comfort, if Lady Antonia accepted. Knowing that she would be safe and loved by someone as warm-hearted as Ria, that she might go on to live a happy and satisfied life –

– that if only he’d had a little courage, too, she might have accepted him –

Forced calm was all it took to prevent an outburst of coughing then and there; he could be proud of that at least. Judging that Ria had had enough time to express herself, he made his way back to Lady Antonia. Rounding the corner, Ria brushed past him, wet-eyed but smiling, looking rather less peaky than she had for the past few days. Lady Antonia, for her part, seemed pensive, and not at all as if a love affair had just reached a happy conclusion.

“My lady?” he ventured.

“Don’t mind it, Jasper.”

“Shall we continue?”

“Yes.”

They had gone only a short way down the hall when Crown Prince Jarrod reared his head, appearing out of nowhere and ordering Jasper to leave. Lady Antonia, sounding extremely unimpressed, gave him the nod and Jasper backed away, though not – this time – leaving earshot. Prince Jarrod’s – confession? Expulsion? List of demands? – whatever one might call it, was peremptory and to the point, and could be heard from a hundred feet away.

So could Lady Antonia’s reply.

“I would rather eat worms and die,” she said.

Prince Jarrod’s howl of rage attracted the attention of more than a few servants – and delegates – roaming the adjacent corridors; Jasper saw one of the servants hide a snigger in the pile of towels she was carrying. Both duty and inclination were clear: he darted back to Lady Antonia’s side, interrupting Prince Jarrod’s swelling tirade.

“So that’s one bridge well and truly burned,” she said to him, eyes alight with laughter. They were safely down the hall by then, nearly to the Matchmaker’s chambers. Stopping outside the door, Jasper paused before knocking, so long that Lady Antonia noticed.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m…debating whether it is my place to say anything or not.”

“You’ve never led me astray before,” said Lady Antonia, which was a generous way of saying he’d never spared her his advice.

His tongue was thick in his mouth, but, blessedly, the flowers didn’t come. “I know you must be under a lot of pressure to form an alliance, whether it be one of the heart or otherwise. But…I meant what I said before. You are free to choose no one. Or yourself, to put it more accurately.” It was not easy to speak through a dry mouth; he persevered. “If that is your choice, know that I will support you, even if you fear your family or your nation will not.”

“Thank you, Jasper,” she said quietly. Her eyes didn’t leave his face. “I think – I hope – I understand.”

“Well, I shouldn’t keep you any longer,” he said hurriedly.

She reached for the doorknob, but rather than twist it, she said: “Don’t worry. If nothing else, I think the last ten minutes or so proves I can say no.”

Then she was gone. Unsure of what to make of her final words, Jasper retreated to her room, where Sayra was sorting out Lady Antonia’s dress for the banquet.

“Ria’s looking a lot better,” she said, ironing with tremendous energy. “Her breathing’s improved and she hasn’t coughed once since this morning.”

Jasper was not in the mood to take hints.

“I’m glad to hear it,” he said.

“You should try it, too.”

“I can’t.”

_I can’t._ That was really what it boiled down to, wasn’t it? _I can’t._

To confess was to intervene in worldly affairs, which was not his place; to confess was to offer up his heart into the hands of someone who might regard it with no more than amiable indifference and, in that scenario, kindly embarrassment; to confess was to leave himself vulnerable to a host of evils, such as exposure, humiliation, and whatever consequences might ripple out from an intrusion into a world he knew very little about.

What could he even say? _I want to sail away with you, I think of you first thing in the morning and last thing at night, I would give up everything I love to be with you?_ It all seemed utterly inadequate.

There was still Yvette’s medicine, he supposed. The taste of the thought was no sweeter than before.

This outbreak was not sudden; he knew it was coming. When he finally stopped coughing, he found that Sayra had paused in her ironing and was looking at him with her eyebrows raised.

“Don’t,” he hissed, gathering up the petals and dropping them into one of Lady Antonia’s flower arrangements.

She shrugged. “I’ve said my piece.”

Lady Antonia returned just then, in a strange mood, and Jasper invented another reason to go and see the Matchmaker. This time he really did go; she usually would tell him what was going on if he asked.

“She’s a fine girl, that one,” she observed. “You were right about her. She’s got vision.”

“Did she say what she meant to do?”

“Is _that_ why you came to visit this old woman? There’s no fool like a young fool, for my money.”

It was never any good to try and get round the Matchmaker. Jasper looked at her imploringly instead, which had its usual effect – none, except amusement.

“Well, she made herself perfectly clear,” she said. “No husband, no wife, no secret love affair. Footloose and fancy-free, apparently. I can’t say I deplore it when a young woman knows her own mind.”

“No,” Jasper said, his voice cracking on the syllable. The Matchmaker frowned when he began to cough; desperate to avoid the interrogation that would undoubtedly occur if he were caught again, he fled the room while he struggled to breathe.

It was the worst bout yet, his elbow braced against the outside wall of the Matchmaker’s study while he bent over with the sheer force of it, his eyes teary and his throat putrid sore by the end. He tasted bile, sour and burning, as the flower knocked against his teeth from the inside.

He spat it out.

Lying in the palm of his hand was a tiny, perfectly formed purple blossom. In its fullness, he could recognise it for what it truly was: one of the flowers – a weed, really – that clung to the sheer drop of the northern cliffs. They grew nowhere else on the island.

Atop those cliffs, on a clear day with a telescope, one could see, not Hise, but the tall ships coming and going from her harbours. Jasper had gone walking there hundreds of times, listening to the mournful cry of gulls over the crash of waves, allowing the wind to dishevel his clothes and hair. What had he been looking for? He wasn’t sure. He had always been careful not to think too hard about it, lest he be consumed by –

By longing. How silly. Here he was after all.

\---

It soon became clear that coughing up whole flowers was a very different business to a few dignified petals.

Lady Antonia took on her new legal role with her usual vim, spending long hours hunting for clues all over the castle. Jasper, mindful that Lord Adalric’s murder was the third known such attempt in the last three weeks, began to rise earlier than usual to prepare her meals himself.

“Getting up at the crack of dawn isn’t doing your chest infection any good,” Mrs White observed when she caught him coughing into the crook of his elbow. “Why don’t you go back to bed and let me do it?”

His hands paused in the cutting of bread, hovering uncertainly over the chopping board.

“It’s peaceful at this time of morning.”

The kitchen maids themselves were only just rattling down the narrow backstairs, still sleepy and annoyed about the start of the day. They seemed almost alien, these women who he had known most of his life, who had slept the night through and even now were preparing the kitchen for the day with well-rehearsed movements.

Perhaps he was the alien.

“Is it Imogen’s trouble that’s worrying you?”

Jasper swallowed against the surging bloom and nodded.

Mrs White took the bread knife from him and started to saw away at the loaf, her practised hands making short work of it. Picking them up and taking them over to the fire for toasting, she motioned him closer and they squatted there, the two of them, the bread slowly crisping in front of them.

“I don’t envy your position,” she said quietly, turning her wrist so that the toasting was even. “To be forbidden to take part in affairs…that is something I could not abide. And when what’s before you is a grave miscarriage of justice, it becomes even more unbearable.”

“I cannot continue much longer as a mere observer of events,” he said, his voice thicker than he would have liked. “But much of this is out of my hands.”

“That is true of everything on earth. No one can move a mountain alone.” She removed the toast from the fork and dropped it back on the board for buttering. “But you have already begun to take part.”

“Hardly.”

“Oh? Is this not an intervention on your part to protect the defence counsel?”

Jasper looked down at his own toasting fork, which had been less of a success; the bread was burnt. “It is a small enough thing to do.”

“Yes, you’re capable of much more,” said Mrs White. “Use the butter in the green dish; it has sea salt in it and we lock it away in the larder at night.”

He obeyed, buttering the toast and halving it diagonally before slotting it into the rack. Lady Antonia didn’t like her toast cold, but –

The snort came abruptly, a humiliating combination of a cough half-stifled and a sneeze. He couldn’t help himself; tears stung his eyes and he opened his mouth, a blossom escaping into his hand.

A sigh came from behind him, as well as, blessedly, a white handkerchief. He pressed it to his face to hide his embarrassment while Mrs White pushed the breakfast tray down the counter, away from him.

“I tell the maids every year, it isn’t hygienic,” she said.

“Does it help?”

He was no longer sure that he would have listened even if she had warned him; perhaps it had always been too late, even before the late-night elocution lessons, even before she strode off the deck of the _Morning Lark_. Two intersecting lines, destined to meet at a single point and never again.

“More than you might think. Mine are bright girls. Do you know what this illness is?”

“Katyia’s Tears,” he said.

“I always think that name does Katyia’s memory a disservice,” she said. “I doubt she would have spent her life moping over a boy, coughing up flowers until she died.”

“Yvette thinks I should take medicine for it,” he said.

Mrs White snorted. “She would! Well, that would be a decision, too, however poor-spirited. It’s an illness of inaction. If you stopped sitting on the fence you’d feel a lot better.”

This was such a prosaic way of describing it that Jasper stiffened, gathering up the breakfast tray in silence.

“All it takes is a little resolution,” said Mrs White, ignoring his offence. She picked up the tiny teapot that had been brewing while they spoke and set it on the tray with a clack. “Give the girl this with my compliments.”

Jasper was well-practised at navigating the backstairs with a tray and the breakfast was still for the most part warm by the time he knocked on Lady Antonia’s door. She opened it herself, just a crack, and he frowned at her.

“My lady?”

“Oh, it’s you,” she said. Jasper might have been stung, but as she opened the door wider he saw on her writing desk another breakfast tray, this one exquisitely arranged with imported fruits and sausage.

“My lady, who brought you this?”

“A _friend_ ,” said Lady Antonia with exaggerated sarcasm. “I haven’t touched it. They want me to throw the trial, can you believe it?”

“And you’re not going to,” he said, staring at the golden tray. The back of his throat was burning.

“Of course not! Why on earth would I? I’m not about to sell out some poor girl for breakfast food. I don’t look like that much of a starving waif, do I? I’ve decided to win the trial instead. I don’t know how I’m going to go about doing that yet – ”

To his everlasting horror, Jasper began to cough wetly. He tried to hide it in his raised shoulder, but his hands shook on the breakfast tray.

“ – so I’m very glad you’re here, I wasn’t sure what to do about the bribe; I don’t think it’s poisoned, but – Jasper!”

His knees impacted against the rug; the breakfast tray came down with him in one piece, clattering on the ground. Up came two, three, four blossoms, tiny and purple and perfect, as he coughed and spluttered, mortifying tears springing to his eyes.

The naked fear in Lady Antonia’s voice shocked him; he tried to raise his head but the violent gasps came again and he jerked wildly. Her hands took hold of his shoulders, steadying him and allowing him to gulp air without restriction. There was a stampede of running feet and a clamour of anxious voices, but he couldn’t bear to look up.

“What the hell is wrong with him?” came Lady Antonia’s voice, loud and sharp, before gentling her tone just as suddenly. “Don’t try to answer, Jasper, just focus on breathing. Seriously, what the hell is this? He’s coughing up flowers!”

“It’s, it’s, it’s the spring sickness,” said Ria, her voice going high and reedy as she tried to lie. Jasper felt a wave of gratitude so strong it almost brought on another fit of coughing. “It happens to Isle natives at, at, at this time of year, it’s nothing serious, it only looks quite bad – ”

“It’s called Katyia’s Tears, there’s flowers growing in his lungs,” said Sayra, flat. She knelt down and began to right the items on the breakfast tray before picking it up and setting it on the desk.

“Flowers growing in his lungs isn’t _serious_?”

“Oh, there’s medicine!” Ria said, pursuing her course with determination if not finesse. “It should clear up soon, it’s the, the, the warm weather, it can have an effect on the conditions.”

“Jasper, have you been taking medicine for this?” Lady Antonia demanded. She forced him to look at her, her brown eyes fierce with concern. Jasper swallowed, caught in an impossible dilemma.

“He definitely hasn’t,” said Sayra. “He’d be cured by now if he had.”

“ _Why_ haven’t you been taking medicine?”

Sayra shrugged, but Lady Antonia wasn’t looking at her. Her face was drawn with worry and her fingers so tight on his shoulders she was practically holding him upright. Jasper wet his lips.

“The medicine is…very drastic,” he said. “I hoped to be able to avoid it for as long as possible.”

“What does it do?”

“It makes you feel really sick!” Ria jumped in, on firmer ground now.

“It burns the feeling out of you,” Jasper said quietly.

Lady Antonia let go of him suddenly, pulling her hands back to hide them in her sleeves. Her mouth opened and shut helplessly, and for a moment she seemed utterly unable to speak.

Eventually, she managed:

“Ria, Sayra, please leave for a bit while I talk to Jasper.”

Ria looked as if she might protest, but Sayra nodded briskly and tugged her away by the arm, closing the door behind them with a click. Jasper wanted to call after them, but the mortification of doing so was too high. He was still bent over the expelled flowers, hiding them from sight.

“Jasper, I need you to answer me,” said Lady Antonia. “What’s happening to you, and how can I help?”

She pushed gently at his shoulders; he fell back against the side of the bed, the wood frame cool on his skin. He was always so weak after a coughing fit, a failure to her in more ways than one.

“It’s an illness called Katyia’s Tears,” he said finally. “It affects those Isle natives who suffer from unrequited love.”

He heard her sharp intake of breath and when he sneaked a glance at her face she was gnawing at her lower lip, subject to some intense emotion. Worry, perhaps.

“And there’s…no cure except this medicine?”

“It is possible,” Jasper said reluctantly, “that confession of one’s feelings may – ameliorate the symptoms.”

“Even if they’re not returned?”

He gave a short nod.

“Then what are you waiting for!” Lady Antonia swallowed visibly, and then produced a dazzling smile. “Jasper, I’m not going to let you leave this room without promising me you’ll confess!”

How could he possibly explain? The idea of admitting his feelings – of seeing that smile falter and fade from her face – only caused a wave of cold dread to overwhelm him, left him exposed, naked and trembling on a cliff edge without the relief of the plunge. Horrifying, to be left standing there in excruciating uncertainty, expressing in fumbling, inarticulate, clichéd phrases an emotion so devastating that it awed him, all the while waiting for her dismissal.

“It is impossible,” he said.

“It’s Imogen, isn’t it,” she said. “Oh, _Jasper_.”

She looked like she wanted to put her arms round him. Jasper could not endure it; he straightened and began to pick himself up from the floor, gathering the fallen blossoms from the rug.

There was a shaky breath from behind him. Lady Antonia said: “I won’t let you down.”

This was so far from any of Jasper’s thoughts that he swung round immediately, but his protest died on his lips when he saw her pained face. “My lady?”

“The situation’s pretty bad, so I didn’t want to make any promises I couldn’t keep,” she said. “But Jasper, I’ll do everything I can for her. I _will_ save her. Even if I lose the trial, it’s not over.”

He stared at her.

He was very badly tempted for a moment to let her go on thinking he was in love with Imogen; it would shield him from her questions perhaps forever, or until the end of the summit, which was – he fought back the tickle in his throat – rapidly approaching. But he could not stomach the pretence; besides, Imogen had enough troubles of her own.

“It is not Imogen,” he said, but even as he said it he knew it would not sound convincing.

“Then who?”

That he could not answer and Lady Antonia turned away, a sigh of frustration escaping her.

“Please, Jasper,” she said. “If I win the trial – _when_ I win the trial, you should tell her. For your own sake, if nothing else.”

“My lady has a great deal of good advice,” he said, bowing.

“That’s not a yes,” she said, but her usual good humour was utterly absent. He did not wait to be dismissed, but made his exit as soon as possible.

As he closed the door behind him, he thought he heard a strange noise, almost like a sob. He almost opened the door again, but Lady Antonia would not have thanked him for it.

\---

The hall was silent: Lady Antonia ranged on one side of it, Lady Avalie on the other. Lady Avalie was smiling; alive to the gravity of the situation and amused by it. Lady Antonia was frowning, her notes scrunched in one hand. She was past the presentation of Imogen’s diary to the jury and was well into her real theory of the case, a task which required both utmost tact and total conviction. A quick glance over the jury suggested that Lord Clarmont was listening conscientiously, though his vote in Imogen’s favour must be safe enough. Princess Penelope was looking relieved that she had an excuse not to vote for an execution; Lord Blain was looking annoyed that he had no excuse _to_ vote for one. Princess Gisette had her head tilted to one side like a curious bird, her gaze intent. She had never liked Lady Antonia: could she exert the influence of her personality over the rest of the jury?

He found that he was worrying at the edge of his glove; one of the stitches had broken, leaving a ragged thread. That would have to be mended when all this was over, when he had a moment. After the summit.

Turning his attention away from the jury, his eyes wandered over the crowd of delegates and servants. Among the servants there was a sense of strain: next to him, Ria was clutching Sayra’s arm so tightly she creased her jacket but Sayra said nothing, only touching her hand gently. The delegates were a little looser; some even seemed to be enjoying themselves.

Standing among the servants, anonymous in black tails and a cravat, was Kade. His mouth was twisted, as if sucking on a lemon, though Jasper was uncertain why. It had been Kade who supplied Lady Antonia with some of the information she was now delivering to the court, Kade who went to a great deal of trouble to ensure an outcome like this.

Kade who had murdered someone.

That part didn’t quite seem real. The face Jasper knew like the back of his hand was the same as ever. Nothing had changed: not the shape of his smirk, nor the way his eyebrows drew down sharply over his nose when he was annoyed. Was it only an illusion, or had Kade always been that person, from boyhood, and Jasper had never realised?

Lady Antonia was as good as her word, crushing all opposition and steering Imogen to safety. Even Princess Gisette voted for her innocence, something that seemed to disgust Kade rather than impress him. Even when Ria pushed past Jasper, rushing towards the newly-freed Imogen to throw her arms round her, Kade seemed only, unbelievably, bored. Even irritated, as if the outcome he had desired was fundamentally worthless because it hadn’t been achieved in the way he would have liked, by the person he would have liked.

“Face like a wet weekend,” Mrs White observed in his ear.

Startled, Jasper jumped slightly. “Me?”

“No, him. He likes being cynical, you know. It’s a real pleasure. You’ll always feel superior and no one remembers when you’re wrong, they’ll still think you’re clever.”

“It is…difficult to imagine enjoying being right about something terrible,” Jasper said.

“Oh, it takes all sorts to make a world. Some people are happy just to be right, some people like putting the boot in. Some people are happy making themselves miserable, so long as they’re not a bother to anyone else.”

“That’s ridiculous,” said Jasper, nettled.

“Quite right,” she said pointedly.

Across the room, momentarily abandoned by her admirers, Lady Antonia sagged. She caught herself on the counsel’s bench and Jasper, deserting Mrs White, made his way over to her and took her firmly by the elbow.

“You will have to excuse us. Lady Antonia is clearly very tired,” he told the crowd of delegates. “I’ll be taking her back to her room.”

There was a storm of protest, but Princess Gisette’s voice cut across them all.

“Of course,” she said lightly. “We can’t possibly ask Lady Antonia to do any more than she has done today. How difficult it must have been, to find out all that.”

To save himself from having to say anything, Jasper bowed. Lady Antonia for once was entirely pliable, allowing him to lead her down the corridor to her room.

Collapsing into a chair, she rested her chin on the palm of her hand. “Do you know who was really behind it all, Jasper?”

“Walls have ears,” he reminded her. “But yes. I did not realise it until the trial.”

“Hmm.” She yawned widely. “D’you think anyone else cottoned on? Maybe Zarad…”

“I think the Princess is unlikely to retaliate at this stage.”

“Perhaps,” she said. “You don’t have to stay, you know. I’ll be fine.”

“My first duty is to you,” he said.

She hesitated, then seemed to come to a decision. All at once she had taken his hands in hers and guided him to the chair opposite.

“I know you want to go see Imogen,” she said, taking a deep breath. Jasper stared down at their entwined hands, but she didn’t pull them away. He should. It would be wiser.

He did not.

“When you do – look – I think you should tell her how you feel. Whatever happens, you’ll feel a lot better for having got it off your chest – hah.” She smiled shakily, the nervousness so unfamiliar on her face that Jasper straightened, their joined hands rising a little before stilling in the air.

“What is it, my lady?”

“I wish you’d call me by my name,” she said. “No, that doesn’t matter. Look.”

He did look, but she didn’t say anything, choosing instead to chew on her lip. Her hands were squeezing his so tightly that he could feel the hard, rapid thrum of her pulse.

“Sorry! All right, maybe this is harder than I thought. What I wanted to say was…you don’t have anything to be afraid of. No one who _you’d_ fall in love with would treat you poorly because of it.”

He raised his head sharply. Her deep brown gaze was trained on him, all her earnestness and warmth focused towards him. He opened his mouth to speak, but there was too much crowding his throat; he could barely breathe.

“What I mean is…it’s easy to tell someone you love them!” Her fingers covering his were beginning to tremble; he shifted his grip so that they might be shielded from the cold. “I’m doing it right now. Jasper, I love you.”

Unexpectedly he choked, his throat too full for reply. Reacting quickly, she thumped him on the back very unromantically, forcing him to spit out a fully-formed flower. He gazed at it rather blankly. Still…?

“At least they’re small flowers,” said Lady Antonia, with the air of one determined to find the silver lining at the bottom of the barrel.

Jasper tried to say something, but his voice came out as a rasp. His heart was pounding rapidly, half-panic, half-elation.

“The thing is,” she said, trying to carry on as if nothing had happened, “the thing is that – please say something.”

“Yes,” he whispered.

“It’s because you’ve always had my back – I mean, this has all been one thing after another, and it’s times like this that my mother said you learn who your friends are, and I know we haven’t known each other for very long, but I know I can rely on you – ”

“Yes,” he said, a little stronger, but she was well into the swing of it now and didn’t hear him.

“You’re the only person I really like being _quiet_ with, do you know that? I never thought I’d enjoy just sitting down and drinking tea with someone on a rainy afternoon, but if it’s you I don’t mind. It makes me happy.”

“Yes,” he said, very clearly. She stopped abruptly, surprised. “Yes, it makes me happy, too.”

He swallowed against a cough that did not come.

“I love you, too.”

There was a moment after he said it where she just stared at him, a moment where he expected to feel naked and exposed to the wind, a flower clinging to a crevice on a sheer cliff. But her hand was still resting on his back, her warmth causing lightness to spread through his chest. He was…happy, untempered by duty or restraint. He had said it and she had heard him. That was good enough.

When she curled her fingers into his collar and dragged him down for a kiss, that was better. When she had to stop kissing him because she was laughing into his mouth, that was better still.

“Why didn’t you say so earlier?!”

_I wanted to be calm_ , he could have said. _I wanted to be dutiful. I wanted to be in control of myself._

“I can’t remember,” he said. None of it seemed to matter quite as much as it had that morning. He was smiling back at her uncontrollably, his composure utterly ruined. His hair was probably sticking out in all directions. He didn’t mind.

“Is your chest all right?” she asked belatedly.

“I’m fine,” he said, realising as he said it that it was true. The clogging in his lungs that had plagued him for weeks was gone, his breath coming easily and sweetly. She kissed his ear in delight, a big, smacking kiss that almost pushed him off-balance. “I love you.”

Why had the disease chosen that moment to vanish? _A little resolution_ , Mrs White had said, unromantic and matter-of-fact. Was that the cure, the courage to step out into the unknown and try for happiness, willing to accept the answer the world gave?

He thought of a tall ship, and a bright-eyed captain, and what he would dare.

“I love you,” he said again into her hair, and allowed himself to believe that it was all that mattered.


End file.
